Rhapsody in B Minor Op 79 No 1
by Tyndall Blue
Summary: There aren't many situations that left Edward devoid of words,or feeling uncertain, but this was one of them. There also aren't many situations in which you can enter a room without General Roy Mustang knowing about it, this was also one of those.


A/N: A little something that came into my head. It's not really filled out and could probably stand a little exploration but I felt like sharing it.

Rhapsody in B Minor Op. 79 No. 1

There aren't many situations that left Edward devoid of words,or feeling uncertain, but this was one of them. There also aren't many situations in which you can enter a room without General Roy Mustang knowing about it, this was also one of those. Earlier that day Edward had disembarked the train in a seething rage, and without Al to calm him, he was a force to be reckoned with, an unstable tornado of destruction. His first stop had been to Central headquarters, slamming open the doors to Mustang's team office with such force that it shook Havoc's cigarette from his lips, and Falman looked up from his maps and papers. Riza calmly looked up from her desk, not a hair fluttered out of place and leveled her deep brown eyes on him.

"The General has gone home for the day, Edward. He will be expecting your report tomorrow at 11." She said with a steadily sculpted smile. The boy's chest was still heaving, his now broadened chest pulling at the seams of his red coat that was direly in need of alteration.

"Does he have any idea what he fucking put me through? Two. Months! Two whole months!" Edward seethed, voice finding new and interesting pitch ranges as he struggled to keep his temper level. Havoc and Fury slowly scooted away from their desks, in the event Edward tried to throw it like the last time he had come in this way, disheveled, dirty, and beyond furious.  
>"The last few days have been very busy and trying and it was pertinent that the General take a half day. Edward, I feel that you should also unwind before your report tomorrow," she clipped, tapping the report she was reviewing on her desk before clipping a small tag where Roy's signature was required. Knowing that trying to pry Riza was futile and that her weapon was always in a twitches reach he slammed the door closed with no less vigor than when he entered.<p>

Outside the office buildings of Central headquarters he found a payphone and fumbled to slip in coins and punch in a phone number he barely remembered from the days of searching for the Philosopher's Stone. As it rang he coiled his fingers in the cord, tugging and pulling mindlessly. All the things he wanted to scream were welling up in him and, much like when he was feeling sick to his stomach, he knew he would feel better when he got them out. The phone rang, rang, and then rang some more before Roy's voice picked up in that bland uninterested tone of most answering machines. The phone was placed with surprising calm back on the hook and he exited the booth. It was clear that there was only one solution to this problem, he would have to find the bastard's house.

He had only been there once, but he remembered the street it was on and had spent enough time in Central to know it fairly well. The boy turned man ambled slowly down the neatly cobbled streets towards the residential housing and it wasn't long before he entered the tidy brick townhomes of the officers of Amestris. It would feel good when he finally got his hands on him, he knew that much. Already he could feel the older man's lapels in his fists and picture the shock on his face as he lifted him from his feet.

To his frustration, the building fronts were looking disappointingly similar; all brick, and simple with a small patch of garden out front, mostly filled with low maintenance flowers like petunias or young trees. One house though, has a pruned rosebush than Edward quirks an eye at. He certainly doesn't remember that, but it stands out.

"Figure's the bastard would have something fruity like that," he sneers and goes up to the car parked out front kicking a little harder than casually at the tire with an automail foot. It looks like the one he'd ridden around in years before, the paint scratched and dinged from it's many uses as a getaway vehicle. The front door of the row house is painted red, matching the rose bush and Edward is certain he has the right place even if the blinds are closed. Though the door was cautiously locked but it only took some of his less honorable alchemy to handle that, and the door slid open silently. Inside was dark and empty, much like he remembered, somewhere in the recesses of the house some sort of prissy piano music was playing. Carefully, he slipped down the hallway towards the music, noting the bareness of the walls, much like last time. Even after having seen Mustang's home he still expected it to be filled with more pomp and circumstance than just a few framed photos of his team and service on the mantle. The kitchen and bedroom were spartan and empty.

The music was coming from the living room, and from what Ed remembered it hadn't held anything more than a bookcase and a couch. The door to the room was shut, muffling the rise and and fall of the chords. Slowly he opened it, he half expected to see Roy lounging in a smoking jacket with a glass of scotch in a leather wingback chair, but what he saw left him speechless.

When he had last been there, there had been no piano, and he had certainly never seen Roy sitting at the bench of one. His hands were unusually free of gloves, and his nails had the clipped and polished look of a man who cared about his appearance. The military jacket was thrown over the back of the tired and solitary couch leaving him in his pants and white tshirt, hair tousled. What struck him most was how relaxed Roy's face looked from the partial view; it made him look older, the wrinkles not from determination but with age. When he was younger, Ed thought his pale complexion was something genetics had gifted him, but now he could see it was the result of a man who spent too much time locked in an office. The photos from Ishbal of a grinning Roy and Hughes showed the faintest tan and pink of a sunburn spread across his nose instead of the dark circles that rested under his eyes. His body had begun to show other signs of a sedentary lifestyle, especially faint bulge of his sides over the waist of his pants. The blonde almost jumped as what had been a slow and somber melody crashed into an aggressive cacophony that had Roy's hands darting up and down the keys.

Edward was no afficianado of music but could tell that Roy played like an alchemist, a scientist, his strokes of the keys precise and fluid. With Roy's eyes closed and his head down, Ed certainly felt like he was intruding on something deeply personal, and the shock of it flushed the anger from his body. His eyes roamed the room cautiously, taking in the little changes that time had brought. Roy Mustang had slowly started to settle in with curtains on the window and tattered but functional rug on the floor. The man on the piano was drawing to a close, and Ed held his breath as the man shifted and sighed on his bench, stretching and flexing those long, pale fingers. The blonde's body tensed, worried that he was about to caught, but not quite ready to run. After all, the newly promoted General's gloves sat neatly next to him on the bench and he was fairly certain Roy would snap first, ask questions later.

Roy turned his face towards the fireplace, leaving Edward to guess at his expression as he took in the faces of those precious to him. After a minute, he turned back to the piano and began playing again with a tight-lipped frown on his face. Edward listened for a few seconds, taking in first few dramatic stanzas of something rough, and possibly written by a composer from Aerugo from what little he knew of classical music, before slowly and silently shutting the door. His walk back down the hall was stiff and silent into the kitchen where he hurriedly scribble a note of "You're a prissy bastard," and left it on the neat and empty counter. He exited the front door and carefully alchemised the lock back into working order and, as one last act of rebellion, plucked a rose from the carefully manicured bush.


End file.
